First Grade: (2019-2020)

July 2020 (I started writing this, and it never got published. I wanted to get it out there!) *Post contains affiliate links. 

We had a wonderful school year for W's first grade even though things were definitely turned a little topsy-turvy due to the pandemic/government tyranny nonsense. Thankfully, none of our personal homeschool plans were disrupted. We did have to cancel our homeschool co-op and miss a few weeks of meeting with our Classical Conversations community. The last few weeks of story time at the library were cancelled, and none of the pools or splash pads have opened yet. The kids have certainly missed seeing friends and going … anywhere. But truly our lives were not as affected as many others.

For the 2019-2020 school year, we did make some changes from last year, the biggest one being that we had a shift in method. We joined the Classical Conversations community that was new in our area. The classical method of schooling wasn't something I knew much about, and my indoctrination training from getting a minor in education made me hesitant at first to try this approach since it does rely heavily on memorization. (Try saying the word "memorization" in a college-level teaching course and see what happens. It's not pretty.) Even though we had a year of homeschool under our belts, my  philosophy wasn't set in stone, so I decided to give it a try. I was able to be a tutor to offset the cost of tuition, and after looking at the curriculum it looked like there was plenty of room for me to add other things if I felt like the kids needed "more."

At the same time, I decided to start a homeschool co-op for our area. I had been meeting with several parents throughout the summer of 2019, and it was so clear that a strong homeschooling community was needed. Even then, people were leaving the public school system in droves, and the vast majority of them had no experience with schooling at home, nor did they have good sources for support. I was made an admin of the local homeschooling group on Facebook mostly because I posted more than anyone else at the time. So I decided to go all in and start a co-op. After meeting with a local business owner, I was able to arrange for a location (a martial arts studio, in fact). With a handful of volunteers, we started the year with 3-4 classes  including art, music,  and yoga. The first day we had 60 people show up - it was a very exciting time! I revised some bylaws from another organization, a board was established, we did some fundraising, and we were able to get insurance. Long story short, it ended up being an overall success. We did experience some good growth the next semester, but then March happened...

Overall, we did have a lot going on in our lives during the 2019-2020 school year, but we had such a great time together as a family, and I would not trade it for anything. W completed first grade, and R (sort of) did preschool. She mostly prefers to play outside or play with dolls, which is totally perfect. She turned 4 in January.

Here is an overview of what we did for each subject:

 

Math: Math-U-See Alpha. I really love Math-U-See since it uses the manipulative blocks along with a very repetitive method of learning math. There is a video for every chapter (and there are 30 chapters). Right away, the concept of place value is emphasized. There is plenty of opportunity for kids to get their "math facts" down. And there is even a bit of algebra snuck into it! There are plenty of word problems as well to help kids get comfortable with those. W eagerly sits down for her math every day and sometimes insists on doing 3-4 lessons per day! 

Bible: Bible Quest and Bible Bee (summer)

Fall/Spring: Bible Quest. This curriculum takes the classical approach and goes through the Bible very methodically and purposefully, beginning with the story of Creation in Genesis. Each lesson has a memory verse that is set to a fun tune (the CD is included), and there are other memory statements to go over throughout the week. They even have additional activities for older ages, so this curriculum can be used for a very wide range of ages, from the youngest kids to high-school aged kids! I have really enjoyed it because it has allowed us to go in-depth into the Bible. For example, in the New Testament there are a handful of lessons on the life of Jesus, then it goes into early church leaders such as Paul and Peter. We expanded on this by watching some of the videos on Right Now Media, which we got for free since we were members of Classical Conversations. They have a set of cards that goes with it, but we never really used them. Right now the kids really love coloring, so I usually print off coloring sheets to go along with the memory work or find a craft to go along with it. It's very simple but effective. 

Summer: Bible Bee

I stumbled across Bible Bee when I was looking into Bible Drill (which I did as a child in the Baptist church.) I don't know if Bible Drill is even a thing anymore, as I wasn't able to find anything about it, and none of the local churches do it anymore. Bible Bee is a vaguely similar concept in that it includes a heavy emphasis on memorization, and older kids can actually go on to compete in the national bee in November of each year. But for the majority of the summer, kids are working in their Bible Bee workbook, and there are different age ranges. W absolutely LOVED doing her workbook last summer. The theme was Worship, and the focus was on Psalms. This year the theme is Trust, and the focus is on Genesis (the story of Joseph). The workbooks for the younger kids contain a large variety of fun activities, devotionals, and coloring pages. The older kids have a lot more in-depth questions and activities. This is actually designed to be done as a community/group study. You can sign up to be a host for your area, and then you meet with other families to go through the material. I actually did sign up to be a 2020 host (I have the T-shirt and everything!) but of course, government tyranny made it impossible for us to actually meet with anyone. Regardless, we had a GREAT time with this, and the theme was very timely for 2020. Almost every day the kids and I pray that God will help us trust him because he has a plan amidst all of this chaos. The story of Joseph has always resonated with me, so this was wonderful. We will definitely do this again next summer. 

Spanish: Complete Book of Starter Spanish, Muzzy, Rosetta Stone, and Duolingo.

We used a wide variety of things for Spanish this year. W is still really young and gets frustrated very easily with making mistakes, so using the apps was a little bit of a challenge. She did much better with the Complete Book of Starter Spanish. It contains very easy activities and coloring sheets that introduce vocabulary. We used ALL the pages, so that was a great investment for us. 

Muzzy is super fun to watch. I may have enjoyed it more than the kids did! I actually got the OLD set on DVD from eBay instead of doing their new subscription service. I feel like the kids absorbed a little from it, but it certainly has its limitations. There aren't that many episodes, and you can only watch it so many times without it getting old. Still a cool video series - just totally supplementary. I wish they had 100 more like it. 

Rosetta Stone didn't end up working for us, as W would get upset when she missed anything (even though it's simple enough to correct. She's just hard on herself. I used Rosetta Stone personally. It's pretty repetitive but reasonably effective. It's not my favorite app but I invested in the lifetime program, so I definitely want someone to be able to use it. Same with Duolingo, though she has recently mentioned remembering certain vocabulary words from Duolingo, so we might give that a try again soon. The free version is great, although I did have premium for a while, and I thought it was worth it. I was using it every day personally for a while and learned a LOT. I'm hoping to get back to that someday soon.  

Music: 

Prodigies Music (affiliate link) I discovered Prodigies last year when I was searching the community for any kind of choir or music program. (Didn't end up finding anything. You can see my in-depth post about Prodigies music HERE.) We did this during the fall with our homeschool co-op and then didn't continue with it in the spring since we had so many other things to do. I LOVE the program and am hoping to get back to it soon once we get everything else adjusted!  

Character: Little Lads and Ladies of Virtue I have a tendency to want be really detailed when we go over each subject, so I chose this book specifically because it has one chapter for each character trait. It's organized really well, with activities and prayer prompts for each day of the week. There is even a coloring sheet included for each week (when there's coloring involved, my kids are always happy with that!) They include a chart at the back where you can cut and paste badges for each week, which we didn't end up using but is a cool thing anyway. The BEST thing about this curriculum for us was the memory verse for each week. It doesn't come with music on its own, but the kids were always inspired to come up with their own tune for the verse each week. (I can't explain how happy it makes me for them to be creatively inspired without any prompting from me.) They had a ton of fun doing that, and they remember most of the verses as a result. The most memorable one for some reason was deference - like who even knows that word anymore? They STILL talk about showing deference to one another. Awesome. 

Geography: Later in the year, I decided to start doing in-depth studies of various countries. Since I have always wanted my kids to be bilingual in English and Spanish at some point, I decided to start with Spanish-speaking countries like Mexico and Spain. We tried to follow along with the Classical Conversations memory work a bit after that, so we did a few European countries, but then I ended up just focusing on South America, and we kept going with that all through the summer. I had a little bit of a hard time finding a curriculum I really liked for this because almost all of them seem to take a regional approach, but I wanted something that went in-depth for each country individually - for at least two weeks. I finally discovered Expedition Earth, which was almost exactly what I needed. It doesn't include every single country, but it has a lot of them. It also comes with a workbook and animal flipbooks for each country. You print out a passport in the beginning, and the kids can add stamps or stickers for each country you study. W ended up doing a lapbook for each country, which helped explode her creativity. She had SO much fun with it and took a lot of pride in doing one each time. (And doing a lapbook wasn't even technically a part of that curriculum.)  

Other books we used for geography were Eat Your Way Around the World and Geography Through Art.  
Eat Your Way Around the World is simply a book of recipes for a handful of countries. It matched up reasonably well with the other books we used, and when it didn't I was able to find other recipes online for that given country. We did enjoy making some of the traditional meals from each country, though the kids didn't always care for them. It helped me personally since I tend to lack creativity in the kitchen! 
Geography Through Art has several craft projects for each country that range in difficulty. We didn't use this as much as I was hoping since these projects take a bit more planning than I am accustomed to, but the kids LOVE crafts and I will definitely be using it more over the years. One project they really found memorable was soap carving from Brazil. You can see a lot of our geography foods and crafts on the Litmosphere Academy Instagram page - @litmosphere.academy  

 

 
Classical Conversations subjects - The following subjects were done with our Classical Conversations community. I will do a separate post going more in-depth into our experience with that! We did choose to enroll in the 2020-2021 program initially but then did not end up pursuing that. 

History: Classical Conversations (CC) Memory work. Classical Conversations was on Cycle two this year, so we went over Medieval History and, later, the history of warfare. Doing CC definitely helped simplify things for history, as I didn't have to buy a separate textbook. I was able to find coloring sheets with copy work for most of the weeks, and that helped us a lot. CC has official history songs for each week, which I loved. Both girls really enjoyed them as well.    

Language Arts: CC Memory work. We only did the Classical Conversations memory work for English this year (along with reading every day of course), and it worked out fine for us. It went over parts of speech in-depth with the memory work, which was great. 

Latin: CC Memory work. Classical Conversations went over first conjugations this year: present, perfect, imperfect, future, pluperfect, and future perfect. We didn't do anything else with Latin this year, since we were just getting started. 

Science: CC Memory work. Classical Conversations did astronomy and physics this year, so there was a large focus on the planets during the first half, then Newton's Laws, thermodynamics, etc. The hands-on science experiments came from Janice Vancleave's 201 Awesome, Magical, Bizarre, and Incredible Experiments. They were pretty simple and easy, designed to stimulate curiosity. The one my kids remember the most was when we did a "to-scale" model of the solar system. 

 

Geography: CC Memory work. Classical Conversations focused on European geography this year, with a little bit of Asia and Oceania thrown in there. 

Art: Foundations of art, great artists, music theory with the tin whistle, orchestra, and composers. Classical Conversations covers the foundations of art using Drawing With Children by Mona Brooks. 

It introduces the concept of OiLS (elements of shape): circles, dots, straight lines, angled lines, and curved lines. Then we go over things like perspective, mirror images, etc.  Then we use an AWESOME book called Discovering Great Artists, which has some really cool art projects along with a mini bio of each artist. It's one of my favorite art books because the projects are pretty easy and memorable. I actually wrote two syllabi for our co-op based on this book for the spring semester. 

After covering drawing and artists, we moved on to music theory using the tin whistle. Most of the parents and tutors seem to dislike this portion, but I thought it was enjoyable. Our tutor did a good job of maintaining control during community day. It's just an introduction to notes, rhythm, and using an instrument, which I thought was great. 

The last section is orchestra and famous composers. This section got kind of screwed up for us because of the government tyranny nonsense, but it would have been a cool thing otherwise. The main thing I remember is watching "Beethoven Lives Upstairs" with the kids - it had been about 20 years since I had seen that movie. I love how it really brings Beethoven to life. We were supposed to use Classical Music for Dummies, but to be honest I never even cracked it open. 

I'm just thrilled to able to spend every day with my precious children. We have adjusted our methods and schedule many times, and to be honest we have not really found anything that works consistently. I'm trying to work with all the different stages and seasons of life. The kids love to PLAY, and I want them to be able to do that as much as they can. They love doing arts and crafts, and they love going for walks and to the playground and library. I've definitely eased up on a lot of things over the past few years and have tried to start taking things a little more slowly. I got myself into a bit too many things this year with both CC and the co-op, but the one silver lining for me about the COVID/government tyranny is that it helped me realize that we were too busy and I was too stressed. I want to be more intentional about living each day more slowly with my children and taking advantage of every precious hour we have together. They are growing so fast, and time already feels like it's going by at warp speed. <3 

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Adagio Tea Subscription Service Review (November/December 2020)

 Adagio Teas Review by Litmosphere

I came across Adagio Teas through an advertisement on Facebook. The look and feel of the website is really fun. They have a lot of flavored teas (which is what I always have a tendency to go straight for) but I was really impressed with how much variety they have - seriously, I discover new things on their website every day. Their tea selection is huge and well-organized, they have a great selection of teaware, including cast-iron pots, they have GREAT gifts, and they even have a "pantry" section with freeze-dried fruit. They have not one tea subscription service but three, as well as a scheduled delivery service. I could go on and on about the website and selection, and to top all of that off, the prices are almost unbeatable. Where many fancy tea websites sell their teas for $8-$10 an ounce, Adagio teas are around $3 an ounce! 

For their subscription services, they have a really cool option called the CommuniTEA. For $20 a month, you get a box of different kinds of tea individually wrapped for each day. Everyone who subscribes gets the same selection, and customers are encouraged to share their experience and opinions each day! 

Another option if you are just dabbling is the Better Tea Club. For $7 a month, you get a small shipment of tea samples and can choose either loose, bagged, or iced. They also have a list of the teas included at the bottom of the page. For November 2020, for example, the loose-leaf box includes earl grey moonlight, chamomile, and chocolate truffle. The bagged box has earl grey and chestnut. The iced tea box has earl grey moonlight, thai chai iced tea, and samurai mate.

The Tea of the Month Club has a whole LOT of different options. You can choose from flavored, herbal, white/oolong, black, decaf, and green. You can select either a 6-month subscription or a 12-month subscription (they don't offer a month-to-month subscription). The 6-month subscriptions are between $60 and $70 and the 12-month subscriptions are between $100 and $120 per month. At the bottom of the page for each option is a complete list of the teas that will be sent. For this club, you get shipments every two months, and each box includes two 3-oz. bags. You will get your birthday zodiac tea sample at some point (I got mine with my first shipment) and they have free samples that you can get from doing polls and other things.  

I was so immediately impressed by this company that I purchased the subscription to the year-long tea of the month club. When I started comparing prices of these tea subscription services, I was honestly stunned at how great of a deal Adagio Teas is. The price per ounce is wildly different than others like SipsBy. (By my calculations, I'm spending around $2.75 per ounce with the flavored tea yearly subscription from Adagio!) 

For my November/December shipment, I got: 

-A 3-oz. bag of pumpkin spice black tea. (November's tea). We opened this bag yesterday, and I was very impressed. Pumpkin spice is so ubiquitous this time of year, and some of them are just bad. The main mistake most tea companies make is going the chai route with pumpkin spice, and I will tell you right now that I cannot abide chai. Both rooibos and chai make me physically ill, so I am usually very skeptical about "spiced" teas. But this tea is WONDERFUL. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It's a perfect fall tea honestly, and that's coming from someone who could drown in all the fruity teas. 

-A 3 oz. bag of candy cane black tea. (December's tea). We are going to wait until after Thanksgiving to crack this one open, but I imagine the kids will really love it. I'm not a huge mint fan myself, so I am not sure about this one. But my husband likes mint, so I am sure this will get consumed eagerly by someone. :) 

-A small tin of the Libra zodiac tea. Apparently they know what they are doing with these teas, because this black tea is a blend of strawberries, chocolate, and cream. Like, seriously, do they know me? Especially after looking at some of the other zodiac blends (none of which appealed to me as much as this one), I am impressed at this. Can't wait to try it. 

-A sample of cherry marzipan oolong. They were doing a poll on their website, and this is the one I voted for, so they sent it to me for free with my shipment. Yay! Have not tried it, but it looks very interesting - a combination of cherry, apple, cinnamon, and almond. 

-Rock sugar, which is some kind of natural sweetener that "doesn't change the flavor of the tea." Seems interesting! 

Needless to say, my jaw was pretty much dropping as I was going through the shipment. For January and February, they are sending a chocolate Ceylon and a "Valentine's" chocolate/strawberry Ceylon. Can. Not. Wait. <3 

Here is my review on the subscription services.

At a glance: $8.25 per month, 3 oz. of tea per month,  $2.75/oz., personalized but not curated, GREAT rewards program, great presentation, fast shipping, overall excellent value. 

Price per month: For the 6-month subscriptions, the prices range from $10.00 to $11.67 per month. For the yearly subscription, prices range from $8.25 to $10 per month. The lower-priced subscriptions are their flavored, herbal, and white/oolong, and the higher-priced subscriptions are the black, decaf, and green. 

Amount of tea per month: Each "month" you get 3 oz. of tea, but since the shipments come every other month, every box comes with 6 oz.! 

Price per ounce: Depending on the subscription you choose, the price per ounce is between $2.75/oz. and $3.89/oz. Super amazing. 

Choices/personalization options: Although they don't have a quiz or a way to sub-in teas, their selection when you sign up is pretty great.

Payments and rewards program: They do accept coupon codes for subscriptions (yay!) and they accept most forms of payment (including PayPal, which is a must for me.) But let's talk about their rewards program. It's very extensive. Right off the bat, I received one point for each dollar I spent on the tea of the month club. You can earn points by posting reviews and by recommending Adagio teas to your friends. You can earn points by participating in discussions on Twitter and by reviewing teas on their partner websites. SO many ways to earn. And the rewards themselves seem pretty cool too. They have free shipping, bags of tea, candles, tins, and even teapots!  

Presentation: As you can see from the picture above, it's a lovely box, and I was so excited to open it! It's very simple and neutral but wonderful. 

Shipping Speed: I ordered my box on November 2 and got it on November 7, which is extremely fast, especially compared to some of the other companies I have ordered from. That's a huge plus for me! 

Overall Value: This subscription service has by far the best value of any I have seen. I would recommend this one to anyone interested in a tea subscription service with a larger amount of tea since they don't send only sample sizes - you get a very reasonable amount of tea! Taking into consideration all the factors I mentioned above, it's pretty unbeatable. I actually don't have a single complaint. The only thing I have seen others mention is that they don't change their yearly schedules, so once your year is up, you will start back at the beginning with the same exact teas. I will see if that's the case, and if it is, I will just switch to another one such as the white/oolong or green. 

Please leave me a comment to request a special $5 off coupon code - Adagio codes don't "keep" well (they expire after a short time). But you can check them out here.

Happy tea shopping! 

SipsBy Tea Subscription Service Review (October 2020)

SipsBy Review by Litmosphere

The kids and I have been really excited about doing tea parties every day during the last few months. It's a great opportunity to sit down together, work on table manners, talk about our day, and have a snack. We've tried reading poetry or novels during this time, but honestly I just like interacting with the kids more casually. We usually sit down after the baby gets up from his nap. (Around 3:00 p.m.) My husband prefers bagged tea, so we started with that, but I kept seeing advertisements for SipsBy everywhere and decided to give it a try. I took advantage of a half-off the first box offer in October, and we were impressed enough to get a year's subscription after that! 

For October, we got:

-Casimira (raspberry Earl grey) from Dryad Teas. I fell totally in LOVE with this tea (if asked, I think I might say this is my current favorite tea) and will definitely be ordering a full-sized bag very soon! I am impressed enough with Dryad now that I am hoping to try their subscription service too!  

-Superberry Samba (berry-flavored green tea that has "more caffeine than coffee") from Zest Tea. These came in bags even though I prefer loose, which ended up working out since my husband was the one who tried this first. He liked it but said he didn't notice the higher caffeine levels. I haven't tried it yet but am pretty excited to since berry teas are my favorite. 

-French Vanilla (black tea) from Churchill's Fine Teas. I haven't tried it but it smells super amazing.

-Cacao tea from MiCacao (non-caffeinated). I was thrilled to get this because I have been seeing so many things about cacao tea. This came in several single-serving package, and it went very quickly, as I loved it! It's not unreasonable to say it's like a watered-down hot chocolate, but I liked that. It's very rich and wonderful. I don't ever add sugar to my tea, and I enjoyed it very much without.    

My review of the subscription service itself:

At a glance - *$15 per month, *1.5 oz. tea per month, (*$10/oz.), highly personalized, reasonably good rewards program, good presentation, slow shipping, overall good value.  

Price per month: The price starts at $15 per month and goes down depending on how many months you pay in advance. A six-month subscription is $84 (save $6) and a twelve month subscription is $165 (save $15). Plus, you actually can use a coupon code when subscribing, and that can save you even more money! 

Amount of tea per month: There are samples from four different companies in each box, and each sample size is slightly different depending on the company, so getting an exact number in ounces is a little difficult, and it also depends on whether you get loose-leaf tea or bagged tea. My best estimate is that each box contains an average of 1.5 oz. of tea, and they state that the boxes will make 15 cups of tea, not including re-steeping. 

Price per oz.: For the once a month and three-month subscriptions, the cost per ounce (based on 1.5 oz.) is $10/oz. For the six month subscription, it comes out to $9.33. For the yearly subscription, it's $9.17. 

Choices/personalization options: SipsBy has an AMAZING personalization/customization system. When you sign up, you take a very detailed quiz, which asks you if you prefer caffeinated/non-caffeinated, bagged/loose, or flavored/unflavored. You can choose yes/no/maybe to their various flavor options: berry, coconut, chocolate, hot spices, minty, floral, etc. They ask about your interest in the various types of tea such as green, black, white, oolong, etc., and they even include more exotic options such as guayusa and yaupon. They ask how you brew your tea and how often you drink it. They have a section at the end for dietary preferences (vegan/gluten free, etc.) and allow you to input any allergies! This is by far the most customizable tea subscription I have ever seen. 

Payments and rewards program: The rewards program has you working toward earning $5 off a box or earning a free box. You can earn points by rating your box as a whole and rating the individual teas. You can also earn a lot of points by referring people to SipsBy with your personal referral link. They get $5 off and so do you. 

Presentation: This box is swanky! It is pretty, and it's designed really well for opening up and taking a picture for social media and blogs. They send filters along with the loose-leaf tea and an insert with more information about each tea/company. This insert also has the coupon codes for the respective companies. 

Shipping speed: I was surprised at how long it took for this to ship, but I'm not usually in any particular hurry, so it wasn't a big deal to me. They are transparent about the slow shipping speed, saying that since each box is individually curated, they can't pre-pack them. This process takes time. I set up my yearly subscription on the first of November, and I didn't get an email saying it was shipped until the 11th. It's scheduled to arrive on the 18th. I am not sure if that is the date it will be arriving every month, but I will update this when I have more experience. One thing that's a plus though is that they have an update as soon as you log in concerning what stage your box is in. (Personalization stage, packing stage, shipping stage, etc.) So you can track that each month! AND when your box ships, you can actually view a spoiler of what's in it if you want! 

Overall value: Based on my research of other companies, SipsBy is actually one of the most expensive subscriptions. That being said, the "feel" of this company is fun, trendy, and exciting. Getting a box each month is a truly, uniquely great experience. The personalization is unbeatable, and the rewards program is pretty nice. The cost is definitely a factor, especially when compared to other boxes, but despite that, I would still rate this as an overall good value. 

Other notes: SipsBy has really great advertising. They have been featured on a lot of blogs and are more well-known than other brands. They don't have an independent tea shop, but they do sell teas from other companies. One thing I like about this company is that they have a list of coupon codes on their website for all their brand partners, so it makes it really easy to save money if you find something you want to reorder. They do lots of giveaways on Instagram too! 

Purchase your own box and get $5 off your first month! (My referral link!)